Kaiga’s tritium lesson

[kristopher]

From Nuclear Engineering International

Kaiga’s tritium lesson
17 May 2010

After last year’s tritium contamination incident at Kaiga in India, Saurav Jha looks at safeguards to protect NPPs from 'mischief.'

Sometimes the most potent and unexpected threat to security systems comes from the inside. This was once again brought into focus by the recent radioactive contamination incident at the Nuclear Power Corporation India Limited (NPCIL)’s Kaiga-I pressurized heavy water reactor in the Indian state of Karnataka on 24 November 2009. An employee poured tritium into a water cooler in the service building. About 50 personnel were affected, although no-one was seriously hurt.

There are short-term and long-term measures to prevent this kind of thing happening again.

Some contributing factors, such as the design of the water cooler, were specific to the Kaiga plant. In addition, there were issues of inadequacy of camera surveillance and dim lighting. Apparently there were blind spots in the plant and the water cooler might have been near one of them. The best international practice today is to install dome surveillance cameras that give a 360-degree view of their surroundings. Needless to say, camera placement needs to be optimized in order to remove blind spots. The cameras should also be connected to a recording device to provide evidence for prosecution. Infrared cameras may also be considered in the event of a failure in the lighting system.

Procedural changes in the way personnel function may involve the introduction of a compulsory two-man team system for handling all sensitive tasks, whether scheduled or otherwise. The composition of such teams must be rotated regularly and it must be ensured that handling of all radioactive material – and not just fuel bundles – be processed through the most stringent inventory management procedures. In fact there is a case for making unescorted employee access to any part of the facility a subject of scrutiny.

A policy of random checks...

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=188&storyCode=2056389

[FBaggins]

1. Is this really more about someone trying to poison coworkers?

Rather than anything specifically about tritium?

It raises an interesting question though. How much tritium was involved?

[NNadir]

2. How about we discuss the radioactivity associated with our anti-nuke oil pals?

The idea that anti-nukes know a shred of the associated science is zero, since they hate the science they can't understand a thing about.

There is nothing as arbitrary, nor as clueless as a apologist for the radioactive oil and gas business, the business that owns the anti-nuke industry right out.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VB2-4FJGWC0-1&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F01%2F2005&_alid=1344105114&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5914&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=8778&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=babba3c6bfbf2c20b7fc05e28e48d301">Journal of Environmental Radioactivity Volume 81, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 47-53

Um, there are many more papers on this topic and I'll put them in another anti-dangerous fossil fueled anti-nuke industry thread.

Natural radionuclides from uranium and thorium series are present everywhere in the environment. They are part of soil, rocks, water, and food and can also be detected in the human body. Uranium-238 and thorium-232 are parents of two complex series of radioactive elements, with lead being the last (stable) element in both series. Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) are present in several industries, including the petroleum industry. NORM can be present in petroleum reservoirs, in oil and gas production, and in processing facilities (Shawky et al., 2001). In some industrial processes, these natural radionuclides can be concentrated or accumulated, originating the TENORM (Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material).

If a geological formation containing 238U and 232Th is left undisturbed for very long periods of time the members of the individual decay series will grow, reaching a state of ‘‘secular equilibrium’’ which is characterized by the fact that every element in the series will present the same activity. This is not the case, however, if one of the radionuclides (like 226Ra) migrates in the soil matrix and is deposited somewhere else. If this condition occurs, the equilibrium is disrupted and the secular equilibrium will not exist anymore. This radium is then said to be ‘‘unsupported’’, meaning that its activity is not related to the activities of its predecessors in the series. Uranium and thorium are present in the earth’s crust at average concentrations of 4.2 and 12.5 ppm, respectively (Shawky et al., 2001). Being relatively insoluble, both uranium and thorium will not be leached in significant quantities by passing fluids and will remain in the oil formation. Radium, on the other hand, is more soluble, and under certain physical and chemical conditions will be leached from the petroleum reservoir rocks to the formation water, which is present together with the oil in the reservoir (Rajaretnam and Spitz, 2000; Shawky et al., 2001).
As oil is pumped to the surface, water will also come along with it. The produced water extracted with the petroleum contains dissolved mineral salts, some of which may be radioactive, because of the presence of 226Ra and 228Ra and their decay products. The amount of NORM in an oil-producing field generally increases as the amount of produced water pumped with the oil increases...

How come our anti-nukes with their stupid obsession with tritium never discuss the energetic nuclei their paymasters in the dangerous fossil industry leave all over the earth?

One reason of course is that they are incompetent to know anything about the science they hate, nuclear science and speak of it only through the prism of their ignorance, as if they take stupid pills each morning before filing another howler with their incredibly dumb tritium obsession.

The other reason is that the anti-nuke industry is a wholly owned subsidiary of the dangerous fossil fuel industry.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins">Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

[Kolesar]

3. Yeah, all those antinukes in the U.S. Energy and Defense departments

pathetic